


we cross our bridges and burn them behind us

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Parallel Universes, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23642758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: When SHRDR powers up and tears a hole in the world, Luna watches Lincoln die. Three years  later, he steps out of thin air and asks for her help.So yeah, that's how her day is going.It's fine.Everything is fine.
Relationships: Lincoln/Luna (The 100)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9
Collections: Chopped Madness





	we cross our bridges and burn them behind us

**Author's Note:**

> Hi fam! This was written for the FINAL (what?? how even?? bless up) round of Chopped! There's a character focus on Luna, a Thriller theme, and doppleganger and parallel universes tropes! Hope you like it ♥

Her ears are ringing. 

She blinks slowly, eyes clouding with the smoke that filled the laboratory. 

Alarms are blaring, the sprinklers are raining down recycled water into the basement; the glass from the observation room window has exploded and the floor is covered in shards like salt. 

The machine in the corner of the room is hissing.

Energy crackles around it, or what’s left of it, its skeleton strewn around the room. A mechanical voice alerts the facility that there has been a contained explosion on Level C, emergency personnel, please report. 

Someone groans. 

She turns her head, doesn’t see anyone, tries to push herself up. Her skin feels like fire and when she looks at it, it’s red, burned. She grits her teeth and presses her arm deeper into the glass to twist her body around.

He’s a few feet away from her, on his back, a trickle of blood trailing from the side of his mouth.

A jagged piece of metal from the transporter protrudes from his abdomen. 

She crawls over to him, skin tearing against the glass on the floor, and his eyes flit over to her when she crouches next to him. 

He smiles, or maybe it’s a grimace, and he slowly lifts a hand. She takes it in one of hers, her other hand slipping between the glass and his head, holding him as best she can. He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, and they’re both breathing so shallow, it feels unreal. 

His eyes close, against the rain and the smoke and the glass and she wants to tell him to open them, wants to beg him to stay awake, stay with her. His grip on her hand loosens and she lowers her head to his chest, shivering, in a pool of water and glass and blood. 

\--

They reopen the lab as soon as they can.

Raven and Wells all-but sleep in Level C, clanging away and rebuilding the SHRDR. It stands for Subatomic Hadron Relativistic Data Ring, and it’s the largest particle collider in the world; they call it Shredder. Emori and Jasper pour over test readings, everything from the last four years, and from the night it went wrong, running analysis after simulation after test. Eligius hires a security force, requires some ex-Navy guy to be in the room at all times; everyone gets used to Miller’s brooding presence. Monty presses on with his algorithms, predictive analyses he’s running with the data they’re pulling, projecting it onto Shredder’s new schematics. He ignores the empty desk at the end of the observation room, and quietly double checks Luna’s code.

Luna can’t stop reliving that night. 

The darkness before she woke, the numbness all around her, the synthetic rain from the sprinklers, strobing lights, shattered glass…

She can’t tell them everything.

The scientists that scuttle around the lab, pouring their hearts into Shredder, getting it up and running again, trying to do their best to honor his legacy. 

Lincoln Woods. 

When Luna closes her eyes, she can see it all— the blood, the rain, the glass, the breathing, the silence. 

She can’t tell them. 

The only thing she can do is get Shredder online again, and maybe then she can begin her penance.

\--

It takes seven months, and everyone holds their breath as they power up Shredder, this time a full crew on site, monitoring.

Nothing happens.

It glows, and there’s a hum of energy that whips around the room as Monty quietly counts to thirty.

As soon as he does, Emori smashes the Power Off button, and they all wait.

Nothing happens. 

It’s only thirty seconds, but they’ve done it.

Raven is cheering and Miller is spinning Monty around and Luna feels her shoulders slump.

It takes seven months, and Luna lets her eyes spill over. 

\--

It’s a routine, now. 

Power up on the first of the month, let Shredder run for thirty seconds longer than the last time, pull as many readings as they can from the frequencies and energy emanating from the portal. 

Pray nothing goes boom. 

They’re now up to almost twenty minutes; four years with Shredder 1.0, the rebuilding, then another three with 2.0. 

One of these days, they’ll open a portal, get a glimpse of a multiverse; for now, they’re just trying to keep Shredder in one piece. 

“Subatomic Hadron Relativistic Data Ring, Mining Sequence, Trial 38, ” Emori says, voice clear into the microphone. “Initiating sequence.”

She nods at Wells who nods back, and turns Shredder on. 

The machine whirs and hums, in a way that’s now familiar, like it’s gathering energy into itself. The charge to its core increases and the humming escalates, like an engine revving. Luna and Monty try to scan through the code; a month’s worth of data, gathered by the terabyte, racing across their screens. 

Wells is pacing a little bit, steps quiet because he’s been yelled at for the nervous habit, working a tight path in the back of the observation room. 

Raven has a pen in her hands and is tapping it against her thigh at an impossible rhythm. 

At nineteen minutes and forty seconds, it happens. 

\--

Shredder doesn’t explode, but the room suddenly snaps with light. 

Everyone raises an arm to block the brightness, and then the lab goes silent. 

Luna and Monty exchange a look and quickly scroll over their monitors, waiting for the blaze to die down in the laboratory. 

Shredder is quiet.

“Did she shut herself down?” Raven asks, kneeling between the two monitors.

“That’s not possible,” Emori says, “She needs a manual override.”

“I think there was one,” Jasper says, his voice faint. 

They look up, at him, and he’s staring past them, ignoring the computers.

There’s someone in the lab.

In front of a dormant Shredder, kneeling on the runway. He has tattoos on his neck, broad shoulders covered in a leather jacket. His hands are flat on the floor, like he’s bracing himself, and he’s breathing heavily. 

He looks up. 

Slowly, around the room, dark eyes roaming over Level C, and everyone in the observation room seems to be frozen.

Luna feels like the walls are closing in, or maybe there’s something wrong with the oxygen filter, and the air’s thinning. Because it can’t be, it doesn’t make sense, he’s still wearing that damn jacket...

“Oh my god,” Wells breathes. 

Monty pushes away from his computer, standing, unbelieving. “Lincoln.”

\--

“He’s not our Lincoln, right?” Emori whispers, almost nervous to break the spell. 

“He isn’t,” Raven says, just as quiet.

“Whose is he, then?” Wells asks. “And why is he here?”

Miller reaches into his back pocket, sighing. “Guess that’s why your boss keeps me around,” he says, “to find out.”

He pulls a pistol, kicks the Observation room door open, gun raised. “Hands where I can see them,” he orders, voice cracking across Level C. 

Lincoln stands, slowly, eyes following Miller steadily as he walks closer. 

“My name is Lincoln,” he says, and Monty makes a quiet sound like he’s just registering it now. “Is this Earth 47?”

“We’re the only earth we know of,” Miller says, but he looks back at the group for confirmation. Emori nods sharply, and he refocuses on Lincoln. 

Lincoln looks past him to the observation deck, scanning the faces there. Something like humor passes over his features as he sees each of them, recognizing them. 

He stops when he sees Luna. 

“Hilker,” he says.

The scientists look at each other, confused at the word and at the expression on his face. 

Luna can’t look away. 

He’s not this earth’s Lincoln, she knows, but he looks so familiar, and when he looks at her— it’s an expression she hasn’t seen in a long time, and a feeling that’s almost foreign curls along her spine.

“That’s Luna,” Miller breaks the moment. “What do you want with her?”

But Lincoln continues to stare at the booth, something like wistfulness on his face. He looks away, then, sudden, back to Miller. 

“She’s called Hilker,” he says, voice soft. “Back in my world.”

“His world,” Emori breathes. “It worked.”

“Em, wait— ” Monty says, but she’s rushing into the room, Raven right behind her. She grabs a bag from the end of the room and Raven swipes a clipboard off the wall. 

“Guys, you can’t— ”

“Welcome to Earth 46,” Raven says, cheerfully cutting off Miller, stepping between the gun and the visitor.

“47, I think he said,” Emori corrects. She grabs a bag from the corner of the room, and whips out a blood pressure cuff. “But, yeah, welcome. We have a lot of questions.”

Lincoln holds out his arm, and something about the motion...Luna exchanges a look with Monty. It’s natural, like he’s expecting it. Like he’s done this before. 

“Do you have Alie here?” he asks, clenching his arm as the cuff tightens. Emori notices this time, the routine of it, the fact that he anticipated her asking him to flex to increase blood flow. 

Monty snaps into it, suddenly, reaching for the intercom between the lab and the observation room. 

“Ally who?” he asks, over the intercom. 

“It’s an alias,” Lincoln says, then turning to Emori, “121 over 80?”

She pauses a moment, waiting for the reading to complete, then looks up at him, suspicious. “121 over 80,” she confirms. 

She unstraps the cuff, looks at Raven, who writes the numbers down. 

“Ally who?” Monty asks again. 

“Becca,” Lincoln says, “If there’s no Alie, what about Becca Franco?”

The scientists exchange a look. 

“She’s our boss,” Emori says, frowning. “Head scientist here at Eligius Corp. Why?”

Lincoln looks at Miller, who looks at Raven, who nods at him; he lowers the gun, then looks back at Lincoln, expectant. 

“We call her Alie,” Lincoln says, now that the pistol is gone. “She was the head scientist at Eligius before she went rogue.”

“How do you mean ‘rogue’?” Monty asks, voice cracking over the intercom.

“Genocide,” Lincoln says, voice final. “She left Earth 23 almost four hours ago, and we think she sought shelter here. ”

\--

Wells’ phone buzzes.

Then Emori’s does, and Jasper’s, and everyone else checks. 

**EMERGENCY ALERT  
** _Imminent Extreme Alert  
_ _WANTED: Becca Franco, 36 year-old female. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen._

They look around the room, and Luna reaches back for her keyboard. Monty steps back to his, clicks a few things and Luna’s monitor is projected onto the side of Level C. BBC, Washington Post, NBC, CNN, all showing images of a half-sunken Grand Central Station, smoke billowing.

“A bomb?” Emori asks. 

“Refresh it,” Lincoln says, voice low. 

Luna refreshes the screen and her stomach sinks as new stories pop up.

“Not just one bomb,” Wells says, voice hollow. 

“Penn Station, too,” Monty reads, “and another at—”. 

“Put this up,” Raven interrupts, swiping on her phone; Luna catches the drop and a message projects on the wall.

It’s cipher text, something out of a bad 90s movie, with letters cut and collaged out of magazines, meaningless.

They all stare at it, desperate for clues. 

“We’ve got to move,” Lincoln says, stepping off the runway. 

Miller moves on instinct, gun back up; Lincoln stops. 

“I’m not your enemy, here,” he says, voice low.

“We don’t know that,” Miller says. “You show up, two second later, half of New York is under attack.”

“I,” Lincoln repeats, “am not your enemy.”

Miller doesn’t lower the gun. “Prove it.”

The room hangs in silence.

“He knows the key.”

Everyone looks at Luna, surprised when her voice cracks over the intercom. 

“How do you know that?” Monty mutters, and Luna lifts her chin, makes herself meet Lincoln’s eyes.

“You know it; don’t you?” she asks.

The corner of his mouth turns up.

“He knows it,” she mutters back to Monty.

“If you’re here to help,” Raven says, “like you say you are, you tell us.”

Lincoln looks down. “I don’t do teams.”

“Wrong earth for that,” Wells says. “What’ve you got?”

Lincoln shakes his head. “Back on 23, it’s just how we operate. Less collateral. Keeps the core team safe. Not since…”

He breaks off, his eyes flitting back to the observation room. Luna feels the weight of his gaze, knowing what he’s not saying. She reaches over Monty for the intercom.

“This isn’t earth 23,” she says. “We do this as a team.”

Raven pulls the paper off the clipboard, flips it over and hands the blank page to Lincoln. He takes it. 

For a long moment, he just holds the clipboard. 

He looks back at the booth, searching for something, and Luna holds his gaze. 

Lincoln begins to write.

\-- 

“Population control,” Jasper reads, once it’s translated.

It’s a manifesto, more than a code. 

“Population control…” Emori frowns, thinking, “meaning the bombs are the goal, not the means to the end.”

“And the end,” Raven steps closer to the screen, “comes at midnight.”

“Four different bombs,” Monty reads, voice shaking, “All across the city. How do we stop that?”

“We don’t,” Lincoln says. “We stop her.” 

He and Miller are staring each other down, and the room is quiet. 

It’s ominous and it’s terrifying and it’s so familiar to Luna, but she can’t deal with it yet, can’t let that cloud this moment. 

She opens the door to the lab; the sound echoes.

“Midnight is in two hours,” she says, voice even. “We’ve got to move.”

\-- 

None of them want to, but they break into teams. 

Miller hooks everyone up with security coms, to keep in touch. They’re essentially long range walkie-talkies, and Luna appreciates that she’ll be able to hear everyone as they fan out over the city. 

Raven and Wells will go to Times Square, Monty and Miller take Port Authority, Emori and Jasper head to the World Trade Center. 

Which leaves the Brooklyn Bridge Park to Luna and Lincoln. 

They're halfway over the bridge when the coms crackle to life.

"Okay," Raven says. "So I've got great news and super-great news, which do you want first?"

Lincoln glances over at Luna.

"She's being sarcastic?" he asks.

"She's being sarcastic," Luna says.

"Let's go with great news," Monty says, ever the optimist.

"The four bombs are rigged to a timer," Raven says. "But they can be disarmed. I think. If I know what I'm doing."

"You do," they all chorus.

It's a reflex, at this point.

"But the thing is— and this is the super-great news, so just strap the heck in for that— the thing is, they all have to be disarmed at the same time."

There's silence over the coms.

"Yeah," Raven says. "That was pretty much my reaction, too."

"So—so what?" Miller says. "You're the QB here, Raven, tell us what the play is."

"That was a sports reference," Jasper says, voice strained with false levity. "I just know it was."

"Find the bombs," Raven says. "That enough of a play for now?"

Luna trades a glance with Lincoln, ignores the way that it feels familiar enough to hurt.

They're the furthest ones out from the bomb site. 

If this goes sideways, it'll be because of them.

"Well," Luna says, just because she has to say something. "It's a start, at least."

\--

"At risk of stating the obvious," Monty says, some time later. "I feel like we should maybe consider calling in the regular law enforcement on this one."

"No," Luna says, at the exact same second that Lincoln says, "Bad call."

She doesn't look at him.

She can't make herself do that just yet.

"What do you mean, bad call?" Emori demands, but Miller says, "Oh, God, they're right."

So Luna knows that he knows what they're thinking.

Of course he does.

He's a smart man, but they're all smart.

Miller's a military man at heart, so of course he knows— 

"Tell everyone, and there'll be a panic," Raven says, realizing. "People will panic—"

"So?" Jasper says. "At least that way, there'll be a chance—"

They're less than an hour from midnight.

It's not enough time to evacuate some of the most crowded city streets in the country.

Any attempt would only result in chaos.

"So what?" Monty says, indignant, and he's clearly caught on by now, too. "So we just let them die?"

"Well, the goal is to maybe not let them die," Raven snaps. "Provided we all do our damn jobs."

" _This_ ," Monty says, "was never part of our jobs."

"Speak for yourself," Miller grumbles, and Luna feels a twinge of gratitude and guilt at the same time, because it's not Miller's job to try and lighten the mood, to try and keep morale high.

This is something new for all of them.

Lincoln doesn't say anything, but she knows, if he were to speak, he'd have said the same thing.

"It's better this way," Luna says, and it's a weak comfort, she knows. "They won't have time— to be afraid. They won't have time to dread it, to try and get away."

Monty's silent for a moment.

"Everyone deserves to know," he says at last, mutinous. "Wouldn't you have wanted to know, before the Shredder blew—"

"Monty!" Emori says.

Luna doesn't turn off her coms.

But it's a real close call.

\--

Monty doesn't apologize.

That's alright, Luna thinks.

She wouldn't have asked him to.

Jasper and Emori are the first to find their bomb.

"Lot of wires," Jasper says. "There's just— God. That's a lot of wires. It's, um. Look for a duffel bag. Medium-sized, with a lock on the zipper? Combination lock, I don't—"

"Duffel bag," Raven says. "How cliche can you be?"

Luna wants to laugh, but doesn't dare.

Lincoln looks like he wants to laugh, too.

Or maybe like he used to laugh.

Earth 47, he'd said.

She wonders how many times he's done this exact same things.

She wonders how many times Raven's made that joke.

She wonders how many times he's seen them all die.

Joke's on him, she thinks. I've seen him die, too.

Raven and Wells are next, and she can hear Raven fretting over how unbelievably cliche it is, and really, shouldn't this be enough to set off all the alarms in the world? Like, surely, someone should have noticed.

Yeah, Luna thinks but doesn't say. Yeah, we maybe should've seen this coming.

They're still a few minutes out from Brooklyn Bridge Park when Monty and Miller reach Port Authority.

"Alright, we're here," Monty says. "Pretty clear, Raven, should be easy enough, tell us what to do— "

Jasper and Emori are the first ones to reach their bomb.

Alie's smart like that, Luna guesses—realizes just a second too late.

Jasper and Emori were relaxed, chatting, waiting for their next instructions.

So when the shooting starts, Luna knows, they were always going to have to listen.

\--

Jasper dies.

He has just enough time to say, "Hey, is that—"

And then there are shots.

And Jasper dies.

Emori doesn't scream.

Luna didn't really think she would.

The shots ring out— one, two, three— and Luna knows that pattern, knows it like the back of her hand, like a trigger under her finger— 

Two to the chest, one to the head.

The first two bullets are to incapacitate. 

The third is the one that kills.

Jasper dies, and Monty is screaming, and Raven isn't saying anything at all, and neither is Miller— 

Miller is a military man, he knows how this goes— 

"Did you know?" Luna asks, and it comes out very cold and very quiet. "Did you know this was going to happen?"

Lincoln doesn't lie.

In that, she figures, he's the same as he ever was.

It's good to know some things are constant.

"I didn't know it would be him," he says. 

Luna nods. "Is it usually—"

"No usually," he says. "It's someone different every time."

Luna nods again.

She doesn't ask him how many times she's died.

She doesn't ask him how many times he's watched it happen.

"They'll be coming for the others soon," she says instead, and it isn't much of a question at all.

\--

They empty out of the cab at the park, sprinting along the waterfront. 

Lincoln stops using the coordinates; it’s redundant at this point. They know what they’re looking for. Luna scans the crowd of people as they run. Kids with ice cream from the pier, young couples jogging, businessmen on bluetooths…

She sees them. 

Four guys, further down the dock, in front of a gangplank of a darkly lit boat. They’re tall, slight, the kind of lean that comes from being quick on your feet, and relies on never being hit. 

She pushes down why she knows that, and feels Lincoln watching her. 

“Bet the last bomb’s on the boat,” he says.

One of the guys sees them. 

Luna looks away but it’s too late, she can feel their eyes on her. They probably recognize Lincoln, too, and she hears a whistle, knows what that means.

They’re calling in other forces.

“Are there more?” she asks, looking determinedly over the water, letting Lincoln check. 

“Seven,” he says.

Luna closes her eyes.

She’s feared this moment, every moment for the last three years.

The moment her past catches up with her.

She lets out a long breath, feels Lincoln watching her. 

“Nine, now,” he says, voice low. “Another coming. Luna—”

“Yeah, okay,” she says, rolls her neck, thinking of Jasper, thinking of Emori having to watch, thinks of Monty hearing what she’s heard, and her hands curl into fists. “Let’s go.” 

\--

It all comes back when the first man pulls out a knife.

Luna ducks, reaches behind him to grab his hair. Her hands close and she wrenches down, he falls, she lifts her knee and there’s the sound she’ll never forget, hasn’t ever forgot, a neck snapping. 

One, she thinks.

And she picks up the knife he dropped.

People are screaming, the citizens, she thinks absently. 

The kids with ice cream and businesspeople on work calls, all scurrying away from the girl with wild hair and a dead man at her feet.

Lincoln is staring at her, something of a smile on his face.

A man charges at him then, and Lincoln moves in a flash, the side of his hand crushing a windpipe, followed by three sharp blows; the man crumples.

Two, Luna thinks. 

She turns, knows her eyes are shining to the other men, raises her eyebrows, and when they charge, she’s ready.

For Jasper, she thinks, you bastards.

\-- 

Turns out, there are more than a dozen. 

Once the men on the docks fall, more come from the boat, but Luna moves with a lightness she hasn’t felt in years. The knife in her fingers is wet, and she feels everything. 

The breeze rolling off the sea, the citizens screaming, the gurgling sounds from the men, the ribs breaking, the bodies falling.

She’s breathing hard when she stops on the deck.

No one rises to meet her.

She turns, and Lincoln is watching her. His own face is spattered with blood, the beginning of bruises on his cheek, but mostly untouched. 

Two against fourteen, she thinks, could’ve been worse.

“Thought it was you,” he says.

Luna shakes her head, tucking her knife up her sleeve. “Later.”

The coms crackle. 

“What was that—”

“Luna, are you okay—”

“It sounded like—”

“What the hell just—”

The scientists’ voices crackle over each other and the reality of what she’s done sinks over Luna. 

It’s not the blood that she’s spilled in that weighs over her, but what her family has heard. 

She’ll deal with it later. 

“Raven,” she says, and she can hear it, the way her voice is different. “You have the sequence?”

The line is silent for a long moment. 

“I do,” Raven says, finally. “But you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

That’s fair, Luna thinks. 

But it’ll wait till after they finish this. 

\--

“Red wire,” Raven says. “On my count. Three. Two. One—”

They pull. 

Hold their breaths as they listen to the sounds on the other lines, silence.

“Okay, good. Blue wire, next. Em, you’re good?”

“Count it, Raven,” Emori says, voice sharp. 

Raven counts. 

They pull the green. 

She walks them through the next sequence, and the next, and the next, and then it’s over. 

A mess of wires in Times Square, the World Trade Center, Port Authority, and Brooklyn Bridge. 

“We did it?” Monty’s voice comes over the coms, breathless, desperate.

He needs this to have been successful. 

“We did it,” Miller says. 

Luna can picture his hand on Monty’s shoulder, the way everyone’s eyes fill. 

“Well done,” says a calm voice.

But it’s not over the coms. 

It’s on the boat with them, and the silence on the coms means everyone heard.

They know the voice, they all do, of the woman who hosts their corporate retreats and announced SHRDR and funded their program and signs their paychecks.

“Becca?” Wells asks, disbelieving.

“Alie,” Lincoln says.

Luna looks up and there she is. 

Dark hair, pristine dress, perfect lipstick.

Luna hopes Becca died quickly, before Alie took her place in this world.

“Lincoln,” Alie smiles. “You’ve never gotten this far before.”

“Your luck was bound to run out.”

Alie cocks her head to the side, pouting. “No such thing as loyalty these days. What’s a hero without his nemesis?”

“You are not his equal,” Luna snaps. “You’re a murderer.”

Alie’s lips curl into a smile. “Hilker. It’s been a while.”

Not long enough, Luna thinks.

Never long enough.

“You’ve gone too far this time.”

Alie raises an eyebrow. “No, silly, it’s other people that have gone too far. There’s too many. I’m just doing what’s right. You believed that once, didn’t you?”

“I never believed in this,” Luna says, and she’s painfully aware of how quiet the coms are.

Alie hums. 

“You know, it is funny that this is where you caught me.”

Nothing about this is funny, Luna thinks. 

“How so?” Lincoln says.

“Well,” Alie tilts her head. “That’s the thing with people in this world. They believe in second chances. Redemption, you know. If you go the justice route here, I’ll walk free. Ten years in prison, tops.”

Jasper, Luna thinks.

Jasper with his perpetually messy hair, Jasper with his awful taste in music, Jasper with his goofy smile. 

Jasper, past tense.

“I suppose,” Alie smiles, “it’s a good thing it happened here.”

Luna circles her wrist, feels the blade slip down her sleeve. 

“That’s the problem, Alie,” she says, and she steps over the mess of wires on the floor. “I’m not from around here.”

“Luna—” Lincoln warns, but she’s past listening.

She moves in a flash, the knife an extension of her, buried to the hilt in Alie’s chest. 

The woman’s eyes widen in shock. 

“You…” she chokes. “You never...not in any of the earths...you didn’t...”

“This is twice now, Alie,” Luna says, her voice shaking, “that you have taken my family. Once, I ran. Now, you can’t. Never again.”

A trickle of blood drips from Alie’s nose, and her legs give out.

Luna follows her to the ground, staring into the eyes of the woman who made her. 

And she twists the knife. 

\-- 

They don't push her for an answer.

That's nice, Luna thinks.

This world is so—nice.

It's not good, not necessarily, because she thinks she could travel a thousand worlds and never find one that's good.

But it's nice.

It's not the worst thing to be.

When they arrive back at Eligius, there's a moment where Luna just wants to run.

It's what she's good at, after all.

But Lincoln is behind her, and the people in front of her, she's known them as well as she's ever known anyone, and she owes them this much, at least.

What happens after is out of her control.

"So," she says, and she's more nervous than she has any right to be, given the circumstances. "I guess I should probably tell you that your Luna is dead."

"Christ," Miller mutters, and goes to pour himself a drink.

"The explosion?" Raven asks, because Raven has always been the smartest out of all of them.

"She didn't suffer," Luna lies. "Neither of them did."

Emori nods, passes a hand over her face, like she's trying to put herself back together.

"And Alie," she says. "You knew her— before? Where you're from?"

"Earth 23," Luna says. "At least, that's what we called it. Yeah, I knew her."

"We both did," Lincoln says, and she'd almost forgotten he was there. "She recruited across Earths, found us on 23. Brought us back to Earth 1..she called it The Conclave."

Luna is grateful, so suddenly, unspeakably grateful.

She'd forgotten what it felt like, having someone at her back.

And she could do it, she knows, make Lincoln tell the whole story, let his kinder take on the things she's done color the others' perception, make her out to be better than she is.

"I killed," she says instead. "And I was good at it, and I believed—I really believed— she said it would make the world better, and I really did believe her."

No one speaks.

From where she stands, it feels as if no one even breathes.

"There were—undesirables," she says, and can hear Alie's voice, rich with promise and conviction and hatred. "People who the world was better off without. The sick, the elderly— the usual."

They're so silent.

She doesn't blame them.

"And then—my brother," she says, and loses her voice for just a second. "I had a brother—"

"Not on this earth," Miller says, from his spot at the bar, and Luna smiles, but there's no warmth behind it.

"Not on that earth, either," she says. "Not anymore."

Monty curses under his breath, pale, and Miller pours him a drink, too.

They know Alie, after all.

They know the way she chooses to purge the world.

"I had to run," Luna says. "I couldn't— after what had happened. I lost faith in Alie. In the cause. And I couldn't...I couldn't..."

It's so very silent, in the room.

Then finally, finally— 

"Well," Raven says, and she won't meet her gaze, but she isn't shouting, either.

Miller pours another drink— one for her and one for Lincoln.

And it’s not quite forgiveness, but she’ll take it, for now. 

\--

Luna stands on the runway with Lincoln, in the empty lab. 

The rest of her team is crammed in the observation room, valiantly pretending they’re not watching them. 

They don’t really know what to do with her, now, and a part of her wants to tell them to recalibrate Shredder.

Maybe she should just go. 

“You can’t do that to them,” Lincoln says.

Of course he can still read her, after all this.

She shakes her head. “I guess not.”

Not when they lost Jasper.

“Felt good, though,” Lincoln says, when she doesn’t say anything. “Side by side again.”

She nods. “It did.”

Maybe this world is rubbing off on her. 

Because standing on the runway, covered in blood that she crossed universes to escape, she wants to hope. 

“So maybe I’ll see you around,” he says.

“Maybe,” she says, because she knows he means that she won’t. 

She’ll spend years behind that computer with Monty, now ignoring two empty places, and they’ll name a wing after Jasper and she’ll keep them safe, like she couldn’t this time.

There’s a whole universe of earths out there, but she doesn’t think she’ll leave this one.

“Okay,” he says.

“Alright then,” she says.

She steps off the runway.

Emori looks at Wells who looks at Shredder and they fire it up. 

The light burns bright and Luna looks away, and then Level C is empty.

Side by side really had been nice.

The microphone cackles to life. 

“He left his jacket,” Emori says, and when Luna looks back, the scientist is holding it up through the glass at the observation room. 

And Luna feels something clenching in her chest, something she’s pushed down since she first stumbled into Level C. Something unfamiliar, something so Earth 47. 

Something like hope.

See you around, he’d said. 

Maybe he meant it after all. 

Hope is something unfamiliar, something cloying and suffocating and saccharine-sweet and— 

And nice.

Well, Luna thinks. She might as well start getting used to it.

After all, it looks like she’s going to be here a little while longer.

See you around, she thinks, and takes the jacket when Emori tosses it in her direction, hangs it over the back of her chair, sits down behind the computer and gets back to work.

They’ve got a lot to do.

And she knows— she knows— it could be a whole lot worse.

**Author's Note:**

> SO! just for trope explanation purposes: the parallel universe is a mirror universe (and there's an infinite amount of them), but specifically Earth 1--where Becca is based and Conclave is founded, 23--where Lincoln and Luna are from, and 47--"our" earth. Luna is the doppleganger (she subs in for herself), but so is ALIE/Becca.


End file.
